Mail servers typically use hard disks to manage the ongoing data storage requirements of the email systems they support. Free hard disk capacity on mail servers is often limited, which creates difficulties for mail server administrators attempting to manage disk space on their mail servers.
Mail server administrators may ask users to reduce the size of their mailboxes to reduce data storage requirements. However, the recipients' requirements may still exceed available data storage capacity. In this case, recipients may be unable to open their mailboxes because of the excess size of their mailboxes. Users' email messages may be consequently deleted or archived.
Some useful techniques have been developed to date for reducing the consumption of disk space on mail servers. U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,672 to International Business Machines Corporation (issued Jul. 3, 2001 and entitled “Method and system for efficiently notifying an information copy recipient in an electronic mail system”) discloses a technique for permitting a sender to selectively send attachments only to some recipients of an email message. However, this disclosed technique is not applicable if the sender intends to send the attachment to all recipients of the email message.
In any event, high disk space consumption often requires the purchase of additional data storage capacity to accommodate data storage requirements on mail servers.
In view of the above observations, a need clearly exists for effectively reducing the data storage requirements of mail servers.